PHOTO & VIDEO GALLERY: November 4, 2014 Protest At Gala Where NYPL Honors Bloomberg A Mayor Selling Shrinking and Underfunding Libraries

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Coverage by the Committee to Save the New York Public Library available here.

Monday Night, on the eve of the mayoral election, Citizens Defending Libraries and the Committee to Save The New York Public Library protested the NYPL's annual fundraising gala honoring Mayor Bloomberg who has been defunding libraries despite their substantially increasing use and has been presiding approvingly over the city’s planned sell-off of libraries and shrinkage of the library system.

In the case of the consolidating shrinkage of the NYPL’s Central Library Plan (recently redubbed the “42nd Street Library Renovation”) the public will likely suffer a significant net loss as substantial sums are spent to vastly reduce public library space and gut the research stacks of the 42nd Street Central Reference Library.  More than $150 million of taxpayer money is proposed to be spent with perhaps a total of around a half billion public dollars being diverted from other potential uses to shrink more than 380,000 square feet of library space down to less than 80,000 square feet.

Meanwhile, other libraries have been sold like the Donnell Library (sold to net a sum far below its value to the public) or are being sold like the Brooklyn Heights and Pacific Branch Library.

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Carolyn E. McIntyre, Citizens Defending Libraries Rally, 4 November 2013


Citizens Defending Libraries Rally, New York Public Library, 4 November 2013

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